The Eugène Louis Charvot Collection contains 19 paintings and 202 works on paper produced by Eugène Louis Charvot (1847-1924), a French doctor and army officer who was also an academically trained, award-winning artist. This collection encompasses works informed by the artist’s assignment to stations in Tunisia, Algeria, Switzerland and a number of locations in France. The artist’s etchings are represented with particular strength.

The James McBey Collection, donated by the artist’s widow in 1961, is one of the largest of his work outside his native Scotland. More than 140 works including several watercolors provide a survey of his entire oeuvre. The subjects of his works relate to a lifetime of world travels to London, Holland, France, Spain, Morocco, Italy, and America. His appointment as an artist to the British Expeditionary Force in Egypt during World War I resulted in a body of work that documented the sights and people of that desert kingdom.

The Joseph Jeffers Dodge Collection is comprised of 230 paintings, drawings and photographs by the artist acquired by gift, bequest, and purchase. Together they constitute a comprehensive survey of his development. The earliest works in the collection document Dodge’s self-training as an artist through the emulation of work created by artists he admired including Picasso. Mature works reflect strong interests in Surrealism, the figure, jazz subjects, landscape, and still life. Through his work, Dodge established an enduring reputation as a talented American realist artist.

The Eugene Savage Collection, purchased in 2007, contains 113 paintings and watercolors (1934-1952) by Eugene Savage (1883-1978), an American muralist, member of the National Academy, and Professor of painting at Yale University who explored the people, native dress, and environment of the Seminole Indians of South Florida. Beyond popular tourist visions of Seminole life, this series, as a collective statement, is an historically specific work that is informed by debates between conservationists who wished to protect the Everglades and advocates who were defending Seminole culture.

The Dennis C. Hayes Collection of Japanese Prints, an important collection of 190 Japanese woodblock prints, was donated in 1998 and provides an overview of the evolution of the medium from the 19th century to the early 20th century. Examples of Meiji-era (1868-1912) ukiyo-e prints, images of the floating world, are particularly abundant. The works of Ando Hiroshige (1797-1858), Toyahara Chikanobu (1838-1912) and Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839-1892) are represented by more than 40 prints each.

The Wark Collection of Early Meissen Porcelain, donated in 1965, is one of the three finest of its type in the world and the best of its kind in the United States. The collection encompasses more than 700 works, largely tableware, produced by the Royal Saxon Porcelain Manufacture from 1708 to 1780 with particular strength before 1756 when production diminished as a result of Prussian occupation of the city. The Wark Collection contains strong evidence of contributions made by the first manager of the studio Johann Friedrich Böttger, the gifted decorator Johann Gregor Höroldt and Johann Joachim Kändler, sculptor and modeler of figurines.

The Cummer’s collection of works on paper and photographs numbers approximately 2,200 objects. Nearly a quarter of these are a part of the Cornelia Morse Carithers Print Collection. Key pieces include Albrecht Dürer’s Circumcision (1511), Pieter Bruegel’s Envy (1558), selections from Theodor de Bry’s Grands Voyages (1591), Jacob de Gheyn II’s Christ Crowned with Thorns (c. 1600), Palma Giovane’s Rest on the Return from Egypt (1625), Carl Friedrich Heinrich Werner’s Colossi of Memnon (1866), Mary Cassatt’s Simone in a Large Plumed Hat (c. 1903), Pablo Picasso’s Nude Seated Before a Curtain (1931), John Steuart Curry’s study for Parade to War, Allegory (1938), and Jacob Lawrence’s The Migrants Cast their Ballots (1974).

Jacob Lawrence (American, 1917 – 2000), The 1920s…The Migrants Cast Their Ballots, 1974, serigraph on paper, 40 9/16 x 32 9/16 in., Gift of the Lorillard Corporation, AG.1976.1.8. © 2023 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Within the American collection, the Cummer is developing a specialty centered on the art and culture of Florida. The earliest works are a significant group of 16th century engravings by Theodor de Bry, whose travel books documented René de Laudonnière on a French Huguenot expedition to Florida. Thomas Moran’s large history painting of 1877-78, Ponce de Léon in Florida, was added to the collection in 1996. Mrs. Cummer’s bequest included Winslow Homer’s watercolor The White Rowboat, St. Johns River (1890). Other landscapes including Martin Johnson Heade’s The St. Johns River (c. 1890-1900) and Herman Herzog’s Figure in River Landscape (c. 1910) were added to the collection in 1966 and 1987 respectively. John James Audubon’s Florida Rats (1841) was also purchased in 1966. In 2001, the Museum purchased a collection of watercolors (from 1921) documenting the Florida childhood of Frederick Frieseke. The Eugene Savage collection explores representations of the Seminole Indians from 1932–1954. Augusta Savage’s sculptures The Diving Boy (c. 1939), a bequest from Mrs. Cummer, and Gamin (c. 1930), purchased in 2013, document the career of this Green Cove Springs, Florida native as well as Jacksonville’s ties to the Harlem Renaissance.